Andrew Thorne

General Sir Augustus Francis Andrew Nicol Thorne, (20 September 1885 – 25 September 1970) was a senior British Army officer who served in the First and Second World Wars, where he commanded the 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division during the Battle of France in mid-1940.

Family
Thorne was the son of Augustus Thorne, a barrister, and Mary Frances Nicol. His nephew, Patrick Campbell-Preston, was the husband of Dame Frances Campbell-Preston.

Thorne married the Hon. Margaret Douglas-Pennant, daughter of George Douglas-Pennant, 2nd Baron Penrhyn, on 29 July 1909 at the Guards' Chapel, Wellington Barracks, in London. They had six children, including Lieutenant Colonel Sir Peter Francis Thorne.

Military career
Educated at Eton and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Thorne was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Grenadier Guards on 2 March 1904. He served in the First World War, becoming a staff captain, having been promoted to the rank of captain on 22 March 1913, then deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster general and then deputy assistant quartermaster general in France. He became commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards in 1916, and saw action in the First Battle of Ypres in 1914 and Battle of the Somme in 1916, earning the Distinguished Service Order and two Bars. The citation for his first Bar, appearing in The London Gazette in July 1918, reads:

"For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. When his battalion had captured its objective in an attack he organised the consolidation of the position and supervised the placing of strong points under very heavy fire. It was mainly through his excellent dispositions that the battalion maintained its position against heavy enemy counter-attacks. He showed great coolness and ability."

Thorne was also awarded the Legion of Honour by the President of France in 1917. In mid-October 1918 he became commander of the 184th Brigade and with it came the temporary rank of brigadier general. Just a month after his thirty-third birthday, he was one of the youngest generals in the British Army during the First World War.

After the war Thorne became assistant military attaché at Washington, D.C. He then returned to the United Kingdom to attend a shortened course at the Staff College, Camberley. This was followed, in 1922, by him becoming a General Staff Officer (GSO) at London District. He served at the Staff College as an instructor from 1923 to 1925. He was appointed military assistant to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff at the War Office in 1925 and commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards again in 1927. In 1932, he was made military attaché in Berlin for three years, where he came to know Adolf Hitler and many of his senior officers personally. He was commander of the 1st Guards Brigade at Aldershot Command in 1935, a temporary brigade commander in Palestine and Transjordan in 1936, and in 1938 he became Major General commanding the Brigade of Guards and General Officer Commanding (GOC) London District.



In 1939, at the start of the Second World War, Thorne became GOC 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division, which played an important role in the defence of the Dunkirk perimeter in 1940. He then became GOC XII Corps before being appointed GOC Scottish Command and Governor of Edinburgh Castle from 1941 to 1945. As GOC XII Corps, he founded the innovative XII Corps Observation Unit as a prototype of the Auxiliary Units guerrilla organisation. Whilst in Scotland, he was involved in the creation of War Office Selection Boards and responsible for the Fortitude North deception plan, as well as preparation for the liberation of Norway.



Germany officially surrendered in Norway on 8 May 1945, and Thorne arrived in Norway on 13 May together with Crown Prince Olav. He brought with him a small military force—one tenth the size of the German military presence—and so had to rely on cooperation with paramilitary forces from the Norwegian resistance movement. He cooperated closely with Jens Chr. Hauge.

After the end of the war in Europe, German prisoners in Norway were reportedly forced to clear minefields under British supervision. The Germans complained to Thorne but he dismissed the accusations arguing that the Germans prisoners were not prisoners of war but "disarmed forces who had surrendered unconditionally." By 1946, when the cleanup ended, 392 were injured and 275 had died; this was contrary to the terms of the Geneva Conventions. He formally held the sovereignty of Norway until 7 June, when Haakon VII of Norway returned from his exile. Thorne remained in charge of dismantling the German presence in Norway until he left the country on 31 October 1945.

Thorne retired in 1946. He was chairman of the Anglo-Norse Society for some time, and was at some point a deputy lieutenant of Berkshire.